Democrats look to make gains in State Legislatures come November…

They hope that increased voting for Democrats would trickle down to State and even Local gains…

To win elections, you need to run candidates. And Democrats have more state legislative candidates than anytime in the past two decades — 5,349 this year as of September, compared with 4,741 Republicans. Republicans had fielded more candidates than Democrats in the past six election cycles, and Democrats are even ahead of Republican candidate counts in 2010, an election in which the GOP made huge gains at the state and federal level.

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In nearly every recent midterm, the president’s party has faced losses at the state level. In 2002 was the rare instance where the president’s party, Republicans, gained seats across state legislatures. “The popularity of the president has a three times greater impact on who can win a legislative election than the popularity of the legislators themselves,” Storey says….

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For most state legislative districts, the legislator’s party aligns with how the district voted in the 2016 presidential election. But Republican state legislators whose district voted for Clinton in 2016 could present opportunities for Democratic challengers in the midterms. There are plenty of seats with Democratic legislators that voted for Trump as well, but these are safer in what is expected to be a Democratic wave year….